Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh, Crowder, Gutfeld are painfully unfunny; here's why
Democracy at Work talked with Bob Logan, director of the classic 1990 spoof "Repossessed"
Bob Logan, the director and writer of the classic 1990 spoof “Repossessed”, is a very funny man. In that sharp and silly parody of “The Exorcist,” Father Jedediah Mayii (Leslie “the Olivier of spoofs” Nielsen) must save Nancy Aglet (Linda Blair, who also played the possessed victim in “The Exorcist”) after a demon that possessed her as a child returns after she watches Christian right-wing grifters (Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab) on TV.
In addition to “Repossessed,” Logan helmed the 1989 social comedy “Up Your Alley,” which stars Blair as a journalist studying homelessness who falls in love with one of her interview subjects (The Unknown Comic), and the 1992 screwball comedy “Meatballs 4”, starring Corey Feldman as a cool counselor who has to save a struggling summer camp. Chatting with Logan, I learned interesting tidbits about all of these projects; how Logan tried being homeless for a week to write “Up Your Alley,” for example, or how Feldman asked to be allowed to dance in “Meatballs 4” and Logan kept it in the film because it was unintentionally funny. I particularly enjoyed learning about Nielsen’s legendary “fart” machine, which is just that — a hand-held device the iconic spoofmeister would randomly press to simulate the sound of flatulence. Without question, I wish I had a time machine so I visit Nielsen on the set of his spoofs like “Repossessed” and experience his fart device in person.
Yet I want to highlight the very last question I asked Logan, about why liberals like him are so funny… and the most conspicuous conservative comedians on the landscape are so painfully unfunny.
Without further ado, my conversation with Logan. It’s been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
Rozsa:
You are both a liberal and a comedian, and in my opinion, liberals tend to just be funnier than conservatives. In my opinion, the top conservative comedians are people like Joe Rogan and Greg Gutfeld, and they’re just lame. They’re just really lame. Is there a reason why conservative comedians, the Stephen Crowder types, tend to be just so horrifically, badly unfunny, painfully, excruciatingly unfunny?
Logan:
Yeah, I think so. There are several reasons, but I think the key reason is the fact that they’re limited by fencing. What I mean by that is they can’t tackle everything. A liberal can tackle every subject, but a conservative can’t. If a conservative starts knocking themselves, they’ll be eaten by their own young—you know, you can’t do that. You can’t be a comedian and not go after the liberals and the conservatives and everything in between. It’s got to be a giant field that’s open for you to attack, because everybody’s got different ideas.
I mean, you and I are liberals, but there are a couple of things where our ideas will fall a little more into the conservative area or toward the center. We all have that. Nobody’s an absolute. I’m not an absolute liberal. What am I predominantly? Oh yeah. But nobody’s an absolute. So again, the comedian who’s a liberal can go off and tackle any subject, and he’s an equal-opportunity person, okay? But a comedian who’s conservative—they’re limited. Try to be in front of a conservative audience and make a Trump joke.
Rozsa:
If Joe Rogan—if Joe Rogan ever made a joke, or Greg Gutfeld or Stephen Crowder ever made a joke about the MAGA movement, their base would get so triggered. They would wet themselves, crap themselves and then complain that someone else did it to them.
Logan:
Absolutely. And Gutfeld—first off, Gutfeld, I don’t find—he’s not a comedian. No, no. He’s a personality. He’s not a comic. He’s a personality who’s an actor playing the role of a comedian. He’s not a comedian.
Now, Joe Rogan is a comedian, but I remember Joe in the early days at the Comedy Store where his stuff was so liberal it was crazy. Always. He wasn’t—he was going with a tide. He was going with the hot thing. He had to be a liberal, hot, funny person. Hot, funny people were liberals. And that’s what he was. But then he started finding his little niche away from it that separated him from the chaff. And that’s what happened with Joe…
Rush Limbaugh used to be a rock-and-roll disc jockey, okay? He used to be one of these, “It’s 27 degrees out there, it’s crazy—go out and party, guys,” and blah blah blah. That was Rush Limbaugh. Then he found his hook. He wasn’t doing well with that, so he changed his hook and became something different.
Rozsa:
There are younger personalities like Matt Walsh, like Steven Crowder, like Ben Shapiro, who wanted to be entertainers, wanted to be comedians, and failed because they lack talent. And I think the reason a lot of these conservatives are unfunny is exactly what you said: they cannot make jokes about real power structures. They cannot comment in thoughtful ways about everything. They can only comment in a very narrow way that appeals to their very narrow base. If they ever span beyond that
And that’s why Joe Rogan isn’t as funny—I mean, isn’t funny right now on his podcast. Every comment, every joke that Joe Rogan makes is so predictable because he only has a very small template that he can use. And that’s true, I think, for a lot of these conservatives.
The one conservative-leaning comedian that sometimes can still make me laugh is Dave Chappelle. He is the only one who can still make me laugh, even though I find a lot of his stuff disgusting.
Logan:
Because he’s a totally honest person. He knows there are certain areas he shouldn’t go into in the minds of others—but he does it anyway. He says, “So what? That’s what we’re all thinking.” So whatever.
The one guy you and I could spend an hour talking about, though, is Bill Maher, because in the last year, year and a half, I have totally lost all respect for Bill Maher.
Rozsa:
Oh yeah. I’m disgusted by his sucking up to Trump. I’m disgusted by his sucking up to Netanyahu. He’s another person who I think used to be funny. I mean, certainly Bill Maher in the nineties was very witty and very clever. I don’t know what happened to him.
Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 11
Back Seat Socialism
Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.